June 10 - June 14

June 10
The am of June 10, as I was preparing my bike, I noticed my front tire flat. Howard, the most mechanical of group again helped me change a tire......we found a puncture from a small thorn. We had a hard ride to Baker City with a strong head wind and heavy rain. I was soaked to the core, but entered a long valley blowing like a wind tunnel so by the time we reached Baker City, I was dry. Upon arrival, we met my wife and son James who had flown to, then driven a rental car from, Boise, ID. We stashed our bikes in a Les Schwab tire dealership warehouse, and Howard and Alex checked into the Bridge Street Inn. We found there was the Hells Canyon Motorcycle Rally in town for four days.....thousands of motorcyclists! My family then drove the 6 hours to Salem, OR via I-84 and the Columbia Gorge reaching there at midnight. We dropped Jordan off to visit with his mother and we checked into a motel. Busy and long day!

June 11
Now our group was split so we each had different experiences. Howard and Alex were to have a day off in Baker City, but since all the rooms were booked, as well as campgrounds, they felt little option but to ride to the next town of Halfway, OR where they stayed the night to await our rendezvous with them on the 12th. Jordan had to be at rehearsal for graduation at 0800, and I went back to the South Salem Cycleworks to get a replacement tire tube as well as other items the group needed. We visited with Jordan, my other son Jake, and Jordan's friend, Kanissa. Graduation was at 6 pm. We were very proud of Jordan and happy to see him in cap and gown! Jordan celebrated with friends until 1 am on the twelfth, whereas Amy, James, and I slept from 1000 pm until 0130 on the twelfth.

June 12
After a 6 hour ride back to Baker City to reunite with our bikes, we said goodbye to Amy and James, and began a sprint to catch the others. We intercepted my friend, Dr. Bruce Abbotts, en route to Halfway. Bruce and I were in residency together, he now resides in Spokane, and we had not seen one another in 19 years. Bruce had found the others in Halfway, then rode his bike to intercept us. I found him about 15 miles west of Halfway, OR resting under a roadside tree. Bruce continued this back and forth for 3 days, driving ahead to our next destination, then unloading his bike and riding back to meet us, turning around and riding back with us to the destination. In Halfway, we met Howard, Alex, and a new rider Dave Krause, who is still with us currently. Dave is riding from Seattle to his own wedding in CO. After all the shaking hands and greetings, the group of now 6 riders headed out for Oxbow, OR with Bruce driving ahead. We camped in Oxbow, a great camp site maintained by the Idaho Power Company.

June 13
Today we rode from Oxbow, OR and crossed over into Idaho, ending in a town called Council. There was no restaurant in Oxbow so we had more than 20 miles to ride to Cambridge to get a real meal. Between meals we consume trail mix, candy bars, honey buns, and peanut butter on crackers. Lunches are usually cheeseburgers but we are beginning to tire of them. These small town restaurants pride themselves on the size of their burgers...one place made a 2 pounder meant to be a family meal. We wound through some canyons, saw mountain goats, and could not figure out why rivers seemed to be flowing in direction opposite us when we felt we were going downhill. We dunked our heads in a frigid mountain stream to cool down only to be outdone by Howard who leaped in like a frog and achieved total submersion. We slept that night in the Old City Hall campground for free, bought a shower for $5.00 from a local RV campsite, and charged our phones in an electrical outlet on the outside of the Council Post Office, which was adjacent to the campground. We found ourselves to be hungry late so we strolled into downtown where a local kindly took us to the local convenience store for packaged sandwiches and drinks, waited on us to shop and then took us back to the campsite.

June 14
June 14 we rode 89 miles from Council to White Bird, ID. We ate breakfast in Council....the usual of two eggs, sausage, 2 pancakes, and coffee. We have eaten lots of huge pancakes, again another thing these places pride themselves on the size of. We rode to the next town of New Meadows where we met Archie who donated the cost of lunch to Ride for Jim. He also chased us down the Highway after we ate to give us copies of a poem he had written about his favorite state, Idaho . We had a beautiful ride to a town called White Bird, where we stayed at Hoots cafe and motel. We gathered up all our dirty clothes and laundered them with total disregard for separation of whites and colors, and toast the wives in the process. Hoots had great rooms and good meals. We had ridden along the Salmon River that day and witnessed many fishing for Salmon, prior to entering Riggins where we had an early dinner. White Bird was the site of a military engagement with the Nez Perce Indians who were native to the Bitteroot Mountains.

-Doug Gardner